USPS Marketing… Ethically Challenged
How the USPS gave your customers to our biggest competitor.
Butler Mailing Services is a small letter shop located in Cincinnati Ohio. As with all lettershops and many print mailers, we enter most of our customers’ mail under one of our bulk permits. Nearly six years ago we received a letter from the BME manager for the Cincinnati District requesting a list of customers using our bulk permits. The intent was to assign a “ghost number” (tracking number) to each of our customers. We would then have to provide this number with each mailing made for that customer when they used our permit. Supposedly this information would be used by the Postal Service to get a handle on who was mailing what and how they (the Postal Service) could better serve this unidentifiable customer base.
I refused. No one gets my customer list for any reason!
As I saw it, there was only one use for the information the USPS planned to collect and that was to make it easier for them to market directly to my customers. At the Postal Forum in Washington shortly thereafter, I vehemently protested this over reaching and potential interference with my customers to John Wargo and Nick Barranca. They assured me this information would not be used to market directly to my customers. Mr. Barranca told me that the letter I had received was not supposed to have gone out. That he had told the people responsible that the USPS had no right to that information and could not defend this request in court.
Ghost numbers were implemented that fall. Instead of requiring Butler Mailing Services to provide a list of our customers, the Postal Service required us to provide our customers’ name and address information when we entered their mail. Data on each customer was entered into a database separate from the acceptance process and assigned a “ghost number”. We were then told to use this ghost number every time we entered a mailing for this customer on our permit. I refused to track ghost numbers. My customers were too valuable for me to assist the Postal Service in the collection of marketing information; no matter what assurances I had been given by Washington.
Six years have passed. Postal One has been implemented. With the implementation of Postal One, the Postal Service is collecting even more information on my customers. Prior to entering the postage statement for our customers, acceptance clerks are required to either utilize an existing ghost number or create a new one. In addition to entering company name and address information, the clerk is now required to enter a contact name and phone number for each of our customers. If this information is not entered into Postal One, the system will not accept the mailing.
So what is the Postal Service doing with six years of my customer information? They are sending marketing materials directly to my customers… and yours. These materials are being sent only to customers with ghost numbers and not to Butler Mailing Services, the permit owner. Don’t be surprised if you missed this marketing piece in your mailbox, it was apparently intentional.
Oh, did I mention that the marketing materials distributed by the Postal Service to my customers contained a promotion from the largest, richest, most powerful competitor we have?
I would never subject my customers to marketing efforts by an outside organization, but this is a condition Butler Mailing Services must meet in able to do business with the Postal Service! The Postal Service then takes our customer data and not only encourages others to market to it but also covers most of the cost of these marketing programs.
At the Washington Postal Forum (2004), I attended a session on “one to one” marketing. Two people, one from Draft Inc. and one from the USPS Marketing Department presented it. In her segment, the postal person reiterated the importance of one to one marketing relationships and went on to tell us how the Postal Service was pulling all of its systems together to better know its customers. In fact, she stated that the Postal Service was “data-mining the information collected by their acceptance units.”
This should strike terror in the hearts of all service providers. Not only does the ghost number provide contact information, but with Postal One the Postal Service is able to retrieve other kinds of information like dollars spent, class of mail used, and volumes mailed. Utilizing Postal One, some customers are uploading their mail.dat files to the Postal Service. These files contain the necessary documentation for acceptance. The problem is that the mail.dat files contain much more information than just the postage statement. Since these files are electronic, they are easier to collect and data-mine with more depth and accuracy. Easier access to more accurate marketing information with no ethical restrictions or conscience, sounds like monopolistic marketing heaven.
This government monopoly has required me to provide private customer information to them or they refuse to do business with me. In return, the USPS is now making my customers’ available to my competitors for the promotion of their products and services. I know this because the contact information we provided for one of our customers was actually mine. The marketing piece I received from the USPS was in a Priority Mail envelope with a letter from a postal official taking credit for his marketing brilliance, a reply card asking how valuable the marketing piece was and would I (the recipient) like to receive more pieces like this. It also contained two CDs, one from Symantec and one from Microsoft!
The Postal Service is not only misusing my customer data, they are also misusing our postage dollars as well. We have a proposed double-digit increase in postal rates on the horizon and the USPS Marketing Department has used scarce resources for its promotion of Symantec and Microsoft, as if they needed my help. I was told at the Postal Forum that the Postal Service provided the Priority mail envelopes, cover letter, reply card and return postage, along with paying for the initial fulfillment of the mailing and the outgoing postage. I was also told that the marketing group responsible for this mailing has a database of 300,000 names. The value of the outgoing postage alone was $1,155,000.00 (300,000 X $3.85). I assume Symantec and Microsoft paid for their CDs and packaging, but maybe not. Maybe the Postal Service “got a good deal” from these giants.
This doesn’t begin nor end with Symantec and Microsoft. The Postal Service conducted a very large and expensive survey this summer in support of the catalogue printing industry. The large companies that dominate this segment of our industry certainly can afford to do their own marketing research. They do not need to use our postage dollars to support their marketing efforts. The sad fact is that the USPS has been using your postage dollars for several years to promote other vendors in the mailing industry, many who compete directly with you. Just follow the links on the CMM marketing pieces mailed out this summer (were you left off this mailing list too?) The links on the CMM pieces direct your customers and potential customers to your competitors. I’ll bet no one has ever asked if you would like to be listed on the usps.com website, nor is there a button where you can easily sign up. Ethically challenged is an understatement when a government monopoly plays favorites with your competitors and uses your postage dollars to make it all happen.
Bottom line, the Postal Service is using huge sums of our money to promote competing products and services directly to our customers. Trust is not something you can rely on when dealing with an ethically challenged government monopoly! You need to act to protect yourself from these incursions in our businesses. Here are several things even small businesses can do:
· Immediately see what information you are sending to the Postal Service acceptance units. It is all available for data-mining and utilization by postal employees as they see fit. The Postal Service has used this information in the past to assist direct competitors in marketing to our customers! (On-line delivery of marketing messages, such as provided by Microsoft, is direct competition to hard copy advertising prepared by Butler Mailing Services and delivered by the USPS!)
· Refuse to provide customer data to the acceptance units for ghost numbers. When asked for customer contact information, phone numbers and mailing addresses, give them yours! You also need to go to your acceptance units and change all of your ghost number contact information to your own. There is nothing in the DMM about ghost numbers!
· Quit sitting on your hands! We really can make this monopoly change its ways, but you cannot sit on the sidelines. You have to jump up and down and shout from the rafter that using your postage dollars to help your competitors market to your customer is not acceptable. If enough people yell loud enough, those in Washington, who have worked so hard for so many years to insulate themselves from their customers, will hear us.
· Call or email your congressman. It is way past time to demand that congress write into the postal reform bills that the Postal Service can in no way interfere or compete with the private sector. You also need to demand that if the Postal Service promotes one service provider, they must promote ALL service providers.
· Call your industry associations and tell them that protection of you customer data must be a priority in their communications with the Postal Service and with politicians.
The Postal Service is picking winners and losers and using its resources (our postage dollars) to achieve its misguided goals. If you do not speak up and defend yourself from this ethically challenged organization, your customers will soon be receiving a marketing message from Butler Mailing Services in a prepaid priority mail envelope at little or no cost… to me. I wish to thank you (in advance) for your support. In dealing with the Postal Service there are winners and losers. The losers are those that do not speak up and defend themselves.
Todd Butler
Butler Mailing Services, Inc.
toddb@butlermail.com
800-237-7914
513-870-5060